University Hospitals Portage Medical Center has taken the first step in its efforts to provide preventative medical care to the inmates at the Portage County Jail, recently providing a Mobile Mammogram Unit for female inmates.
“It is aligning with the UH mission, which is to heal, to teach and to discover so we are proactively trying to address preventive medicine inside the jail,” University Hospitals Nurse Manager of Jail Medicine Amy Gardner told The Weekly Villager on Oct. 27. “We are looking to help people understand what it means to look at things from a different perspective.”
According to Gardner, the Mobile Mammogram Unit screened 13 female inmates and identified possible disease in two of the 13 female inmates that underwent an examination. She added that the Portage County Jail is well-equipped to handle treatment options for the inmates that may be at risk of serious disease.
“We send people to the hospital if they need higher levels of care, and then we take care of them upon their arrival back into the jail, so we get very creative to manage all levels of care,” she added.
The other female inmates who underwent screenings and received a clean bill of health were supplied with a letter that stated that they needed no further testing but also received recommendations to receive another mammogram the following year.
UH Portage Medical Centers’ first Mobile Mammogram Unit was made possible through funding by the Kent Area Chapter of the Links, a not-for-profit organization established to sustain the culture and economic survival of African Americans and other residents of African ancestry.
“They were looking for an opportunity to partner and help deliver care to underserved individuals and the jail was identified as part of that population and through that partnership we were able to bring out the Mobile Mammogram Van and provide a screening,” noted Gardner.
Gardner said that although UH Portage Medical Center only screened 13 female inmates, it received interest from several more inmates but could not provide a screening because they were released well before the Mobile Mammogram Unit arrived at the Portage County Jail.
Although those female inmates did not have a chance to undergo a screening while at the jail, Gardner added that her staff provided those inmates with information on where they could receive a screening upon their release.
She acknowledged that half of the battle in encouraging interest from the female inmates is educating them about the benefits of mammograms, as most of the female inmate population shows little to no interest in their overall health.
She noted that upon arriving to serve their sentence, female inmates tend to lack personal care and usually enter the correctional system already with some type of illness.
“Our biggest challenge was having our patients understand we would take care of them, and we were going to go on this journey with them and understand the next steps of the what-ifs and break down any type of concerns that they had,” she said. “They would go to the female pods and have discussions in person with our patients and give them the education because the sign-up was voluntary.”
When it has come to preventative care in the Portage County correctional system, Gardner said that inmates have frequently received treatment only after their symptoms are detected and trying to diagnose illnesses before they progress has been a work in progress.
“We have a lot of people that we diagnose as new diabetics or have high blood pressure or thyroid issues, it just depends, once we start asking questions and we start getting to know our patients and understand what is going on with them and any symptoms that they have,” she said. “We start looking, we do lab work, and we identify if there is an issue when we start treating that problem.”
Gardner credited the cooperation of Portage County Jail to ensure the Mobile Mammogram Unit a success.
“We had a plan to make sure everything was handled safely, we had female officers, so everybody felt comfortable and everybody works extremely well together and the Sheriff is extremely accommodating to making sure health care is optimal here,” she said.
Gardner added that UH Portage Medical Center is in further discussions on what other preventative care options they can provide to the inmate population at of the Jail with the Mobile Mammogram Unit being just the first step.
